Modest building that saved town's heritage

THERE it still stands, a building with no history, no significance, no real use and little architectural merit. It just looks rather nice.

And it just looking rather nice was enough to blow a £2.5m town centre redevelopment out of the water.

The building in question is Bennet House, in Darlington's Market Square. It dates back to the end of the 18th Century and so, in Darlington terms, it is very old.

In its earliest days, it was two, possibly three, town houses for moderately well-to-do families.

For example, surgeon Richard Hodgson, who died about 1830 and is buried at Gainford, lived there for a while. He was the district's childbirth expert and was always seen dashing around on his horse from one expectant mother to another.

Possibly, his neighbour was John Dove, who moved to London in 1828. He was a lawyer and Methodist minister who wrote books on John Wesley and the poet Andrew Marvel.

Also living there around this time was Joseph Sams and his family. Joseph was a Quaker teacher who appears to have owned the land behind Bennet House. Here he had some school buildings and a playground.

A quite desperate tragedy struck poor Joseph, because it is recorded that in 1831 his daughters, Esther, 21, Hannah, 19, and Mary Sarah, 18, all died, along with their brother Joseph, 11. The following year his fifth and final child, Lucy, 17, also succumbed.

By the time work started on Central Hall, on the site of Sams' school, in 1846, Bennet House was no longer a home, it was offices.

One of the first occupants was the Darlington and Stockton Times newspaper, which had been set up in Barnard Castle in 1847, but soon moved to the Bennet House basement, where it stayed until 1865.

Above it was Darlington Subscription Library and an apartment for the librarian.

By 1894, the owner of Bennet House was Edward Wooler, one of the worthies of the town. It is received wisdom that Wooler wanted to widen Bull Wynd from 8ft 6in to 9ft and so dismantled the west wall of Bennet House and rebuilt it six inches in. Even though Mr Wooler was wealthy, he would have had to have had money to burn to do so much work for so few inches.

In 1939, Darlington council bought Bennet House and installed the borough treasurer.

The house was still council property when, in the late 1960s, the Shepherd Plan was drawn up. The plan proposed demolishing Bennet House and covering the whole Market Place in a hideous concrete jungle.

The plan was finally sunk by a public inquiry in 1971, which decided that even though Bennet House had been badly mutilated over the centuries and had no historical association or significance, it was too nice to be replaced by something as grotesque as the Shepherd Plan.

As the renowned architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner said: "Bennet House is much altered, but still attractive." And so it still stands today.

BENNET House's history is so lost we don't even know why we call it Bennet. Stranger still, for much of its life it has not been known as Bennet.

Indeed, when Queen Victoria came to the throne it was known as Central Buildings.

When Central Hall was built, Bennet House was known as Central Hall Buildings.

It is only after Darlington council bought it in 1939 that it became regularly called Bennet.

REKINDLING the Shepherd Plan and its successor, the Tornbohm Plan, as Echo Memories has done in recent weeks, is proving painful. It is as if we are scratching at a scar that has barely healed.

So, as numerous people have been whispering in our ear this past fortnight their version of events from more than 30 years ago, this is Echo Memories' reading of the bitter battle for the heart of Darlington.

The Shepherd Plan was a Conservative plan. It was grotesque and hideous. The ruling Tory Party signed a £2.5m contract with the Shepherd construction company of York just six days before the 1970 local election to allow the plan to go ahead.

But Labour campaigned on an anti-Shepherd ticket. It won the election and immediately pulled out of the deal. The Conservative leader was one of two Tory councillors who resigned forthwith, and Labour hounded out of its own party four renegade councillors who had supported Shepherd.

Undoubtedly, Labour saved Darlington from Shepherd, and for this we should be eternally grateful. Labour even fought Shepherd when the company demanded £1m in compensation. Eventually, £380,000 was paid out of council reserves - money well spent.

Then, though, Labour allowed the borough architect, Eric Tornbohm, to come up with a series of plans which were distinctly unpleasing to the modern eye, as we have seen in recent weeks. On one occasion, senior Labour members asked Mr Tornbohm to design a replica of the new town hall on the opposite side of Feethams. This would be a new civic theatre, and a grant was set aside by the Arts Council to pay for it.

At the 1971 public inquiry, Bennet House finally laid the Shepherd scheme to rest, and laid down markers for any future development of the town centre.

Mr Tornbohm continued to turn out designs that wiped out the Covered Market, Central Hall and Bakehouse Hill. There is no evidence that Labour formally adopted these plans as party policy, but the Labour-run council did drift into another public inquiry over them in 1973.

A group of townspeople, as Ian Dougill told here last week, crucially managed at the last moment to get some more Market Square buildings listed as historic. This scuppered the Tornbohm scheme, but still, in 1974, The Northern Echo was worried that the council would come back with another ugly concrete proposal.

It fretted that "pliant councillors might do the fashionable thing and sink the last traces of the town's individuality. After a few years' trauma with bulldozers, excavations and scaffolding, Darlington would probably emerge with a soulless and draughty centre indistinguishable from others the country over".

The Echo continued: "Architects will point out that the slab-concrete-look many people dislike so much is not an obligatory finish, but the expensive risk is surely not worth taking."

Only in the early summer of 1974 did the borough engineers' department turn its attention to more delicate in-filling and restoration. Still under Labour, the council began thinking of imaginatively tucking the Dolphin Centre in behind some old buildings, and in 1978 the Covered Market and the Town Clock were restored in award-winning style.

Darlington must have breathed a sigh of relief. By the skin of its teeth, it had emerged from a period in which its character was under threat from all sides with its soul intact.

ECHO Memories' interest in this area of town was awakened by the discovery of pictures of a 1970 play in a Stanhope Road attic.

The play, The Darlington Martyr, was written by John Wackett, house manager of the Civic Theatre, and performed by a group of teenagers. The students spent part of summer 1970 on a theatre workshop.

It was about George Swalwell, the martyr, who was hanged in the Market Square in 1594 - the last public execution in Darlington.

Since the cast picture was published a fortnight ago, several people have been in touch with other names.

For example, on the right at the front in the long cloak is Michael Fitzpatrick, who played the narrating bishop. Michael is now a deputy headteacher in Lancashire and has been teaching drama ever since.

The tall chap at the back of the lower group is Alan Jewell, who is also a teacher - possibly a head - in Maidstone, Kent. Also pictured are Robbin and Charles Jackson (Charles has appeared on TV as an actor), David Cook and Brian Stanley, who is now in California. Third from the right on the back row is Dave Woodward, who recalls: "The first night it didn't go too good because we very nearly hanged the fellow who was playing the martyr."

Charles A Jackson, a member of the famous firm of Darlington butchers, was also in the cast. But rather than go into butchery, he took to the stage and has appeared in theatres all over the country.

"My first acting part was as a murderer in Macbeth while I was on a meat technology course in Blackpool," he said.

Charles lives in Norwich and is writing his biography, called A Man of Many Parts.

A MOMENT of typing madness rendered the piece last week on Miss AM Donaldson, headteacher of Alderman Leach School in Cockerton, practically meaningless. We meant to say that Miss Donaldson gave the school its green and mauve colours for its uniform and, rather eccentrically, she wore the same colours most days herself. She did not, as we inadvertently suggested, squeeze into the school uniform herself. Sorry, Miss Donaldson. Please spare the rod.

IF you would like to berate Echo Memories about its views on 1970s town centre developments, point out any silly mistakes, or give any more information on any of the topics in this week's column, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone 01325-505062 and leave a message.

Published: 04/12/2002